Declassified GAO Report Exposes Fatally Flawed Israel Investigations

...The report reveals why the 2010 Non-Proliferation Review Conference at the UN – like the GAO – isn’t really capable of challenging the true drivers of Middle East nuclear proliferation. “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” is a report so unique and noble in intent that there will probably never be another like it. While it leaves unexplored the ongoing presence, influence, and effect of Israel’s lobbyists working at the center of U.S. presidential administrations, for concerned Americans the GAO provides a snapshot of a moment in time before their Congress, aspiring politicians, and mid-level management of government agencies all “got the memo.”

In 2010 that unwritten memo reads something like this: Crimes committed in the name of Israel – no matter how audacious – will never be properly investigated, let alone prosecuted… so don’t waste your time.

...But the 11-year gap “obviously hampered” the effort. The GAO revealed that the DOE’s nuclear materials safeguards, which before 1967 tracked the monetary value rather than the precise mass of the uranium, were seriously flawed. NUMEC claimed key records covering a period of heavy uranium loss were destroyed during a “labor dispute” in 1964. NUMEC paid a $1.1 million fine for 206 pounds of missing uranium in 1966, which closed the DOE case. NUMEC also hired away one of the DOE’s chief on-site investigators to enhance the appearance of serious materials control and accountability. The GAO found that even by 1978 the FBI had not contacted key individuals in the affair. An FBI agent-in-charge told the GAO it did not investigate the source of funds to pay NUMEC’s DOE fine anticipating “legal difficulties.” So the GAO investigated the matter, placing its own telephone calls to Mellon Bank.

The GAO report is highly critical of the CIA: “From interviews with a former CIA official and with former and current officials and staff of DOE and the FBI we concluded that the CIA did not fully cooperate with DOE or the FBI in attempting to resolve the NUMEC matter.” The report is inconclusive about exactly what happened at NUMEC, but not about the agencies involved in the investigation through 1978. “We believe a timely, concerted effort on the part of these three agencies would have greatly aided and possibly solved the NUMEC diversion questions, if they desired to do so.” Read more.

The Apollo Affair was a 1965 the incident in which a US company, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), in Apollo, Pennsylvania was investigated for losing 200-600 pounds of highly enriched uranium. NUMEC's startup capital was provided by David Lowenthal, who was closely associated with Israeli intelligence and David Ben-Gurion.

NUMEC was a small fuel rod fabrication plant, producing fuel for U.S. Navy vessels that was also involved in "secret weapons projects". NUMEC pioneered mass production of nuclear fuel paving the way to power commercial reactors for power plants. Between 1957 and 1967 NUMEC received over 22 tons of government-owned Uranium-235.

In 1965, the FBI investigated Dr. Zalman Shapiro, the company's president, over the loss 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Although investigated by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other government agencies and inquiring reporters, no charges were ever filed. An exhaustive General Accounting Office study of the investigations declassified in May of 2010 stated "We believe a timely, concerted effort on the part of these three agencies would have greatly aided and possibly solved the NUMEC diversion questions, if they desired to do so." [1]Many remain convinced that Israel received 200 pounds of enriched uranium particularly given the visit of Israeli spy Rafael Eitan who was involved in the Jonathan Pollard incident, although no concrete evidence was ever found.[2][3]

In June of 1986, analyst Anthony Cordesman told the LA Times,“There is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.”

End of excerpt

That's most of what the Wikipedia page, only two or three paragraphs that I left out.

articles at the end of his above article, the original copy. There are few eye-catching titles from earlier this year, like, f.e.; one regarding Israel again disregarding economic sanctions that the Obama admin. has apparently imposed, unilaterally, against Iran, and another piece about the Israeli lobby imposing "crippling sanctions" on the U.S.

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